


first light of dawn

by LadyCharity



Category: Barkskins (TV)
Genre: Cultural Differences, Friendship, Gen, Melancholy, Name Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:34:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25027018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyCharity/pseuds/LadyCharity
Summary: In which Yvon will save Hamish, or lose himself trying.
Relationships: Hamish Goames & Yvon
Comments: 14
Kudos: 32





	first light of dawn

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry......for this..............no proofread...........
> 
> Do you ever write things and feel like you could really get on board with this motif but can't for the life of you tie it more elegantly together, but you attempt it anyway? Yah...that me. 
> 
> I did as much research as I could but I am sure that there are mistakes I've made. If you know of any, please feel free to point them out to me! And if anyone would like to know what resources I used to study, particularly on the Ojibwe people (which is most of what I research, i'll be honest I haven't TOUCHED Hudson Bay Company because that all confuses me) let me know! 
> 
> Thank you so much for giving this a chance! I know that Barkskins doesn't have many fics out there, so if you so happen to stumble upon mine, I very appreciate it!

Yvon’s only memory of his father is of his absence. He has no recollection of the taste of his father’s hunt, or if his father would have participated in such. His father had no time to teach him anything, or give him anything other than a surname. All Yvon remembers of his father is the charcoal that his mother smudged onto his face when he was a child, immediately after his father’s death. 

“Sit still,” his mother said as Yvon had squirmed and swatted at the itching charcoal. Her voice was husky with grief. “Little one, do as I say.”

She smeared the charcoal on his forehead, her fingers stern but not harsh. Yvon remembers that he could hear the crackling of the fire that they kept for his father, the smell of smoking cedar, and the still-warm charcoal being applied to his face. 

“What is this for?” he had asked. 

“So that your father will not take you with him,” she said. “If his spirit forgets you have a life yet to live.”

Yvon does not remember his father. But he remembers being small, still small enough to sit in his mother’s lap, and wondering if that was so bad. 

“Is he going very far?” he had asked.

“Westward,” she said. She combed his hair absentmindedly. “That is where Gaagige Minawaanigozigiwining is. He will rest there.”

“Would he be lonely,” Yvon asked, “if I do not go with him?”

She cupped his face and turned it so that he faced her.

“And what of me?” she said. “My sunlight, wouldn’t I be lonely then?”

He bowed his head, sheepish. She drew him close, her arms tightening across him. He felt her strong chin bury itself on the top of his head, and felt her heartbeat against him. To this day, when he thinks of his mother’s grief, he thinks of it as warmth. 

“You are everything that I have,” she said. “Do not forget that.” 

Yvon said nothing, because he was a child and did not yet crack under the gravitas of her words. Mother and son sat quietly together, watching the dancing fire on his first night without his father. He wouldn’t have known it at the time, but the heat faded the charcoal on his face. No matter--as he slept, his mother held him close in her arms, and no ghost could have gotten in between them.

-

Yvon recognises the faces of those who have escaped Wobik. They are filthy with blood, sweat, and terrified snot, from the spindly child to the burliest man. They have made it out with their skin still on their back, although some had less than others. Wobik is a small village--Yvon recognises all of them, and none of those faces is the one he is searching for. 

They move deeper into the woods, until the trees are so thick around them that overhead the sky is merely an interruption of widespread leafy canopy. Yvon knows that this is not a good sign. These Frenchmen don’t know how to walk straight if there is not a path made out for them already. He doubts that they have any clue that they are all heading southwest. And if Chief Tehonikonhraken and his warriors find them, these villagers will not even hear them coming until they are nose to nose with them. 

In short, Yvon has little hope for them. This is not what is distressing him. 

He guides the disheveled girl in his care to Mother Sabrine, who walks with a limp but keeps her chin level nonetheless. They say nothing, only walking alongside each other in the shocked silence that the rest of Wobik is gripped by. Out of the corner of his eye, Yvon sees Mother Sabrine look appraisingly at the injured girl before wordlessly drawing closer to her. He reckons that this is good enough. 

“Will you look after her, Mother?” he says. 

Mother Sabrine turns to him. The emotion behind her gaze is unreadable. She could be privately calculating the sort of man he is, simply by his face. Or she could be simply considering his request. Yvon has to walk around with that sort of caveat whenever he speaks with anyone new. 

“Do you mean to leave?” she says. “You are not the sort of man who shirks his responsibility for no reason.” 

It is a generous observation, because it is accurate. 

“A yes or no first, Mother, if you please,” he says. 

Mother Sabrine sets her jaw, but not out of resentment. 

“Yes,” she says. She holds a hand out to the trembling girl, who in her shock seems to hear none of this. “Of course I will.” 

Yvon dips his head in acknowledgement. He hoists his musket higher up his shoulder, turns on his heel, and moves against the flow of the crowd. 

“Where are you going?” Mother Sabrine calls out. “Have you forgotten what it is that we are fleeing? You could be killed.”

“I know,” says Yvon. This is not what is distressing him, either. “That is why I need to find my friend.” 

He cuts through the remnant of Wobik, hastening back. A hand takes Yvon by the sleeve frantically. He turns to see Mother Sabrine, her face drawn and grave. She had run after him.

“Child, you are putting yourself in danger,” she says. “If your friend has not joined us already, I fear the worst for him.”

“I know,” he says. That is what terrifies him. 

He gently shakes off Mother Sabrine’s hand and retreats towards the stench of smoke and metallic decay. 

-

Yvon has read more words than many have spoken in their lifetime. In several languages, too. He carries a book in his belongings even when they take up too much room, John Milton immortalised by sheets of paper. The works of poets and scholars can live on without a single utterance, their words and stories carried onward by black ink. 

Even so, when he reads, he reads out loud, so that he can taste the weight of them on his tongue, and hear them ride on the backs of breezes so that it carries forth, as if _Paradise Lost_ is a pebble dropped in a still lake, and it ripples forward until it reaches the ocean. After all, the hemlock trees and the riverbank pebbles have no eyes to read; he does not tell anyone this, but he reads poetry from his little black book so that the forests can listen along, until they all can recite the stanzas nearly from memory. 

Hamish finds this politely exasperating. 

“Does it have to be Milton?” he once said. 

Yvon did not look up from his book. 

“Have you got anything better?” he said. 

“I prefer Bradstreet,” said Hamish. “She isn’t quite as long-winded.” 

Yvon turned a page, but he permitted himself a smile.

“That sounds like a personal problem,” he said. 

His companion scowled, but saved the rest of his protesting for later. 

Yvon defends Milton not out of favour. Milton is a master of the English language, naturally, and he retells ancient stories with fresh blood--a practise that Yvon finds familiar, even if the story itself is not. Milton puts into lilting verse the dark beasts in each man, and Yvon finds comfort in their company.

But no matter how many stanzas of the fall of Lucifer that Yvon can memorise, Milton is a lease more than a gift--the English have given Milton to him in exchange for gratitude and devotion. They think that the fact that he can read and write English is a testament to the victory of their presence in this land. Never mind that Yvon can speak about three different languages from his mother’s side, and has learned English and French on his own before attending Harvard. Sometimes, as he quotes, “Neither man nor angel can discern hypocrisy, the only evil that walks invisible except to God alone”--he hears the English pat themselves on the back, and the thoughtful words taste bitter. 

No, Yvon defends Milton simply because it irritates Hamish, and he finds that amusing. 

“Tell a story that I haven’t heard before instead,” Hamish often said. 

The request made Yvon laugh. Hamish has likely seen fewer winters than some of the bears wading in the river. There are thousands of stories he has not yet heard. Yvon closed his book, as he does not need it. 

“Then let me tell you about Wenebojo,” he said. “The child of the sun.” And Hamish listened. 

-

Captain Bouchard is unrecognisable. If it weren’t for Mathilde crouching over the body, her face greyer and more lined than it was the day before, Yvon would have not known it was him. 

If Yvon must be honest, he feels little for Bouchard. He is certain that the dead captain would not take much offense to it anyway. He would have passed him by--Hamish would protest the lack of a burial, but in Yvon’s defense, Bouchard is dead and therefore patient. Right now, Yvon has more pressing matters: that of the living, or whom he hopes is still living. Hamish is loyal to the Company to a fault, but his resolve prevails in the end--he would not have stood by without a fight if he knew that the Iroquois warriors targeted Wobik, which is precisely the problem. 

But Mathilde shudders as she mutely covers Bouchard’s face with leaves, partly for respect, partly for disgust. Yvon hauls her to her feet, firmly but not unkindly. She shakes, but she meets his gaze unyieldingly. She has swallowed down the deaths of her daughter and her husband already; she will eventually pass over this one as well. 

“Wobik is overrun,” Yvon says. “You can’t go back into the village. Head southwest, you’ll find others who escaped going into the woods there.” 

She shakes her head. Her chapped lips are drawn into a thin line.

“I won’t go anywhere until I find Renardette,” she says. “I know you’ll think me foolish,” she adds, just as Yvon opens his mouth. “But I won’t lose that girl. I must find her, Mr Kirkpatrick. She is the only one I have left.” 

Yvon clenches his teeth. Maybe a wiser and more dutiful person would continue to insist and send her off to the direction of safety, especially when Chief Tehonikonhraken was not yet finished with his business with Wobik. But Yvon knows too well how Mathilde feels, and he is no hypocrite. 

“I know,” he says. His voice steels. “I know.” 

Her eyes flicker to his side, to the noticeable absence, and she seems to understand. He gestures to her to follow him. She draws in a deep breath, hesitant, and then nods. She casts one last grieved look at Bouchard, before the two of them pursue their desperate search. 

-

When Yvon first met Hamish Goames, he expected to underestimate him. Hamish was young, barely past twenty-six years of age, and he had that perpetual sullenness about him that only emphasised his youth. Yvon heard in passing that Hamish’s brother-in-law also worked for the Hudson Bay Company, which gave Yvon an amusing impression of a little boy tagging along with his older brother’s gang. 

“Hamish Goames,” he had said with the sort of tone one would reserve for a funeral. “At your service.” 

He had pale grey eyes, like the sky after a heavy storm had already passed, and his lips were constantly fixed in a worried line. He looked not the type that would last here. He seemed like someone who cared too much, and the Company wanted little to do with those sort. 

“Yvon Kirkpatrick,” Yvon said. “At the Company’s, or whoever is putting the coin in my purse.”

There was a hint of curiosity in Hamish’s eyes as he tried to affix the French name to Yvon’s face. Yvon smiled in spite of himself.

“It is not my only name,” he said, “if that is what you were wondering.” 

Hamish had the right mind to look humbled. 

“What other names are yours?” he said. 

“I have given you one already,” Yvon said. “Don’t be too greedy.” 

Their colleagues of the Company laughed at Hamish. Don’t mind Yvon, they said. You won’t find it easy to understand him. He speaks in riddles.

But Hamish shook his head. No, he said. Yvon had spoken very plainly. You just don’t like to understand when you’ve been refused. 

Some of the Company did not hide their distaste of the Iroquois. Savages, heathens, uncivilised--white men come up with many dramatic synonyms just to declare someone different. 

“Skin crawls at the sight of them,” one Company man once said with a shudder. “Always feel their eyes on the back of my head when I go out. Can’t even take a piss without feeling watched.”

“I wouldn’t flatter yourself like that,” Yvon said . “There isn’t much to see.” 

Only Hamish heard him. Yvon knew this because he saw Hamish choke on his drink.

“Heard they go around toting the scalps of the poor blokes they kill. Like animals.” 

“Ay, well, an animal would feel most comfortable like that, wouldn’t it? No human would ever--”

“Their lot wear nothing but skins,” said yet another. “And usually, just their own. Bloody mad.” 

Yvon resisted to comment, because that was obviously bullshit. Especially in the dead of winter. The company he kept did not resist to pitch in their two cents, because men will hallucinate rumours when they apparently have nothing better to do. 

“Oi, Richards,” said another. His eyes darted sheepishly towards Yvon with a semblance of discomfort.

“Who, Kirkpatrick?” said the one named Richards. “He’s different, isn’t he? Wearing britches and a proper hat, like a proper Christian man.” 

The man nibbled on their supper, satisfied with the answer. Yvon found himself surprisingly disappointed. 

“ _And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed_ ,” Yvon recited. 

The men’s heads turned to Yvon, as if only just now comprehending that he could hear them. Yvon regarded their attention with a slight smile. 

“ _In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him_ ,” recited Yvon. “Buck naked, too.”

Now all conversation was silenced. Yvon was unbothered. Normally, he would carefully consider preserving the peace of the community, but that was apparently Anishinaabe priorities--which, according to the English, was not applicable to them. So Yvon did not give a shit. 

“It’s been a while since I studied all of your books,” he said. “But I think I remember correctly that it wasn’t until the devil got a hold of man did man start wearing underwear.” He shrugs and takes a bite of an apple. “But what do I know?” 

Richards sputtered. 

“You are a sensible man, Kirkpatrick,” said Richards. “Now that you’ve come to live in our world, would you ever truly want to go back into the dark?”

Yvon crunched through his apple methodically. 

“Does that mean that you think you turn into the devil’s spawn every time you strip to take a bath?” he said. He rubbed his nose for good measure. “That would explain the smell.” 

Someone snorted with amusement. Everyone’s head turned to see who it was, but whoever it is covers themselves quickly. Yvon had a sneaking suspicion he knows who it is, because when he excused himself to walk along the creek, Hamish left the group and followed him.

Yvon crouched by the river to drink from it, relishing the viscous sleekness it left behind on his tongue. He waited for Hamish to say his bit, but Hamish did not say anything. He only stood by, and even he seemed a little at a loss of what he was here for.

“If you don’t mind,” Yvon said, “I’d like to piss in private.” 

“I’m sorry for what was said,” Hamish said. 

He was almost laughably solemn, his wide eyes downcast and his thin lips pressed together in glum disappointment in his fellow man. It almost made Yvon laugh. It also made him curious.

“And why’s that?” he asked. “What are you sorry about, Goames?”

“You are our colleague,” Hamish said. “You ought to be respected.” 

Yvon smiled.

“Would you still be saying that if I wore skins and hides?” Yvon said. “Or if I did run buck naked as they say?” 

Hamish hesitated. Yvon straightened, shaking the water off of his hands. He did not fill the silence; it was not a rhetorical question. He had no interest in earning his equality with the men of the Company, to prove his humanity according to their measurement and numbers and colour palette. 

“I must,” Hamish said. “It’s like you said, isn’t it? You would be no less an image bearer if you were starkers.” 

Yvon smiled wryly. Hamish referred to the Creator as Yahweh, and Yvon knew the name to be Gichi-Manidoo. Yvon had done his part in meeting the English halfway, studying their Latin and their verses and using the Creator’s English name in conversation. The professors threaded similarities between their Bibles and the Anishinaabe accounts of birth and deluges and the interceding spirit, and yet it was only with Hamish did Yvon feel like they might know the same Giver of Life. 

Yvon wondered what an earnest man like Hamish was doing with the Company. Honest men do not survive Turtle Island when they live among the English and the French. Yvon knew not to get too attached, but he already knew he would be sad to see Hamish go. 

-

“Whatever you do,” Yvon says to Mathilde, “Stay close to me, and for the love of all things good, don’t keep yelling for Renardette.”

He does not have the slightest idea where Renardette could be, but he knows how to get to the Iroquois camp from here, and that is the last place he had seen Hamish. The chances of Renardette being anywhere near there is slim and unreasonable, but they have no other place to start, so it is no less a possibility than anywhere else in these woods. 

Mathilde does not respond readily. She has always been more comfortable with Hamish than with Yvon, for multiple reasons. She just happens to be better at conducting business in spite of it compared to her recently departed husband. 

“Will the Iroquois be so quick to kill us the moment they see us?” she says. 

She tries to keep her voice steady--Yvon can hear it. As if this is casual conversation as they hurry through the autumn-strewn forest floor, dreading to search for ghosts. 

“Is that so surprising?” Yvon says. “Your captain was quick to do the same to them.” 

Mathilde’s jaw tightens, but she does not jump to Bouchard’s defense. She has seen enough of this world to know that speaking ill of the dead is inevitable. 

“How are we going to find anyone in the woods like this?” she says. “Renardette is a small girl. And if Mr Goames is in danger, he will not be walking about plainly for us to see.” 

She has a point. Wherever he may be right now, Hamish is likely not on his feet. Yvon’s jaw stiffens. Worrying helps nobody, least of all Hamish. But practicality has little power over it as Yvon’s blood runs cold with dread. 

“We will first start where we know for certain there are no Iroquois,” he says.

She turns sharply to him, horrified. 

“Right into their camp?” she said. 

“You can’t deny that it would be empty right now,” Yvon says. “Considering that they are preoccupied with Wobik at the moment.” 

He waits for her to protest and backtrack, and he commends her for continuing onward without stumbling over a step. 

“For all that they are, I doubt that the two of them would stay there on their own terms,” Mathilde says. 

“Your girl may not,” said Yvon. “But Goames can be a fool.” 

“There isn’t anything that the Iroquois would want out of them,” she says.

“I can’t speak for the Iroquois any more than you can,” he says. When he notices her puzzlement, he adds, “I am Anishinaabe. If you don’t know the difference, at least understand that there are several.”

“I know one thing that is the same between you and the Iroquois, at least,” Mathilde says with some resentment. “You won’t say no to the Hudson Bay Company.” 

Despite himself, Yvon laughs sharply.

“Do you think a ‘no’ will stop the Company from getting what they want, Mathilde?” he says. 

Mathilde does not argue. She draws her cloak tighter around her shoulders.

“What is a man like you doing with the Company?” she says. 

Yvon scratches at the dried blood crusting under his nose and in the cracks of his lips. He is tempted to ask Mathilde what sort of man she thinks he is in the first place to ask. He suspects that the answer might surprise him. 

“It is far too late to pose that sort of question,” he says. His breath hitches. “As we’ve made it to our destination.”

As the two of them climb up the slope, the tops of the Iroquois camp rises above the hillside. 

-

Hamish is naturally inquisitive. Behind the glower and the monotone is a young man in a new world who wants to know everything about the rivers, the mist in the mountains, the incense of a burning hemlock. 

It turns out that Yvon is the only one who has the patience to temper that curiosity. He does not mind. It reminds him of himself when he was younger, following his mother’s brother down the rivers in the early mornings, asking what it meant when he buried the bones of their hunt in the bushes, the precise word to describe the sheen of the moonlight upon the still lake.

“How can you tell it is a hemlock?” Hamish asked, and Yvon showed him the hair-thin white stripes on the back of its pines, and the tough mushrooms that sprout from the jagged bark.

“What are your stars’ stories?” he asked, and Yvon told him of Biboonkeonini, and the coming frost ahead. Even he could tell that his voice has changed as he tells the story, in a way that he felt in the base of his chest as he echoed his mother in all ways but sound. When the mornings gre colder, and Hamish had to blow into his hands to feel his fingertips, Yvon heard him mutter complaints of the Wintermaker. It made Yvon snort. 

“What is your name?” Hamish still asked, and Yvon scoffed and said, you would not even be able to pronounce it. Hamish promised he would practise, and Yvon did not disbelieve him, but he did not want to be disappointed, either. 

“Do you have a family?” he asked, and Yvon said, That’s enough questions for today. He spooned an extra heap of beans into Hamish’s bowl, and it shut him up, for now.

Yvon still dreams of his mother. She looks the way he last saw her, before he left for Harvard. She is cooking soup of wild rice for him, even though he is grown and can look after himself. I do not know when will be the next time I can share a meal with you, she says. 

He is no longer dressed in coats and stiff boots. He sits cross-legged beside her; there is no book of Englishmen’s words in his bag, no musket around his shoulder. He speaks in his mother’s language, and in his dreams he never stumbles over his words. His voice does not sound like a stranger’s when he speaks. 

In his dreams, she is just about the same age as he is now. Twenty-five years of death have not aged her. The fires have died down, the tobacco reduced to ash, the grief internalised. And yet his mother returns, and brushes the hair behind his ears as if he is small again. 

My sunlight, she says. You remember that is who you are, don’t you? My ray of sun. 

His chest aches. When her fingers trace his brow, he feels a spike of fear, because it is too good to be true and his heart might burst with yearning, and then he will be shocked awake and lose another last moment with her. 

I’ve gone too far, haven’t I? he asks her.

She smiles. She calls him by his namesake. It is only in dreams now when anyone calls him such. He holds his breath for the morning when he will wake up and forget what it is. 

How far can you possibly go, she says, before you can never come westward? My son, you can never go far enough that you cannot come to me one day. Follow the sun, and you will. 

Before her hand can touch his head, he wakes up, twenty years older, in white men’s clothes with a white man’s name. 

-

“Renardette!” Mathilde gasps.

She runs towards the young girl in the muddy blue dress before Yvon can stop her. Yvon curses under his breath, because she sends dead leaves flying as she sprints. Then he sees a dark-clad figure lying on the ground, and before he knows it, he is running too. 

Mathilde sweeps Renardette into a hug, not noticing or perhaps not minding how someone else’s blood smears across the girl’s face. Yvon quickens his pace; he can’t tell if the body on the ground is moving or not. 

“Goames,” he calls out. Before he can control himself, he cries, “Hamish!” 

There is little colour left in Hamish’s face, which makes the black of his clothes and the red of his chest all the more blatant. His hand is clamped over his shot chest, and his dawn-grey eyes are unfocused and barely stay open on their own. His gaze slides onto Yvon, and he chokes on his scant breath, but he can scarcely make any words out. 

“You damn idiot,” Yvon hisses. 

He crouches by Hamish’s side, and his blood runs cold at the sight of Hamish’s. He pries Hamish’s hand away from the sound and feels his own face fall. 

“Yvon,” Mathilde says, her voice unnaturally still. 

He turns, almost impatiently, towards her, and follows her gaze. At the sight of Ratasénthos’ body bleeding out beside them, cold dread sits at the base of his throat like a stone. He looks to Renardette, who watches the body with unsettling contentment. 

There is a rustling of leaves, and Yvon’s hand flies to his rifle. Mathilde spins around to search for the source of the noise, pushing Renardette behind her. It is only a scampering animal, but it would be only a matter of time before it is the returning footsteps of Ratasénthos’ father.

“Come on,” Yvon says.

He moves to haul Hamish onto his shoulders, but Hamish grabs his wrist. His hands are going cold, and Yvon instinctively clasps his own hand over them as if it could help. 

“Go,” Hamish wheezes. “Before they come back. _Go_.” 

Yvon knows that it is a hopeless case otherwise. The moment Chief Tehonikonhraken returns to see the body of his last son, he will not hesitate, and he will not stop at one dead Englishman. And with Hamish unable to walk, they would not make it far enough. They could walk clear across to Lake Gichi-Gami and it would never be far enough, not for a grieved and vengeful father. 

But Yvon had made a choice, long before Hamish’s blood was spilt. The other Company agents saw Yvon as an equal until it could cost them--the moment Yvon had been thrown onto death’s doorsteps, so ill that he couldn’t breathe, it was Hamish alone who stayed by Yvon’s side and nursed him back to health, even when he began to cough violently himself. This was, Yvon thinks wryly, the perfect repayment. 

He turns to Mathilde and Renardette. He nods curtly. 

“You heard him,” he says.

Renardette digs her heels into the ground. Mathilde looks back towards the woods, then back to Yvon.

“You will not make it far without help,” Mathilde says.

“No,” Yvon agrees. “I won’t. But there is no time to be generous.” 

Mathilde’s grip tightens around Renardette’s shoulders. She is a practical woman. She knows that people can spend more chivalry than they can afford. But she has already seen Captain Bouchard beaten to death just this morning. Even if it is only in her mind’s eye, she cannot bear to see another. 

Renardette makes the choice first. She tears a strip of cloth from her dress and presses it against Hamish’s chest. There is an intense expression on her face, as if she knows exactly what to do. That settles it. Mathilde kneels next to Renardette and puts a hand on Hamish’s forehead. 

“If we go quickly enough,” she says, “he can die in our arms rather than by their hand.” 

It is the truth, and it hurts nonetheless. Yvon pulls Hamish’s arm over his shoulder, and Mathilde takes the other. Renardette holds the cloth to his chest, and together, the four of them move, like a single beast. 

-

People need to be named in order to be healed. 

That is what his mother used to say. That one’s true name is the one they were given by the Creator before they had drawn breath, before they become of flesh and bone. It is the name that the spirits know them by, the voice of prayer. The names that the elders search for you, the name that a mother sings to you, the name that friends or enemies attach to you. The name is proof of humanity, of love, of surrender--to give one’s name to another is to trust them with all that you are and all which has led up to you. 

One needs to know their spirit name in order to heal. It is the thread that weaves them to creation, else they cannot hold on. 

Yvon does not know how far the four of them make it, but it does not feel far enough. Hamish cannot keep his own head up, and when Yvon staggers and Mathilde fumbles, Hamish slumps to the ground and does not move. 

“Just a little further, Mr Goames,” Mathilde says. “Come on--open your eyes, come on.” 

His skin is too clammy, and his chest does not rise high enough. Yvon can only catch a glimpse of the white of Hamish’s eyes through his dark lashes. It may be too late for him. 

“Hamish,” Yvon says. He takes Hamish’s shoulder and shakes it. “ _Hamish_.” 

Yvon does not know if the young man would have anything that resembles a spirit name. Hamish, the name which means the supplanter, the overcomer. The one who takes the place of the old, Jacob who steals his brother’s birthright. Yvon tightens his grip on Hamish as if to tell him to _hold on_ , shake off death and overthrow the past. Live up to your name, Hamish Goames. Hold on to that which you fight tooth and nail for and do not let go. 

Hamish does not stir under Yvon’s hand. Something twists in his chest. 

“We can’t leave him here alone,” Mathilde says, reading the inevitable. 

There is a bloodied arrowhead still in Renardette’s hand. The dark thought would be practical--maybe merciful--but Yvon refuses to acknowledge it. He had made a promise to himself, even before Hamish had saved his life. When an austere but honest young man asked for his name and story, Yvon took him under his wing. 

Hamish be damned. _Yvon_ will not let go. 

Yvon draws in a deep breath. He branches his shoulders and drags Hamish onto his back. Hamish is taller than him, but Yvon is stronger than he looks. He clenches his teeth as he rises back onto his feet, feeling Hamish’s blood soak through the back of his coat. 

“Go ahead of me,” Yvon says to Mathilde.

“I can’t leave you alone, either,” she says, bound to something as foolish as chivalry. 

“Head west,” he says. “Don’t think that I can’t catch up with you.” 

Mathilde wipes her brow. Her eyes lock with Yvon’s, and after a moment she nods. She takes Renardette by the hand and the two of them hurry. Yvon breathes evenly, the air in his lungs settling under Hamish’s weight, before pressing onward.

What other names are yours? Hamish had asked him so long ago.

When Yvon fears he will forget in his dreams, the first light of dawn always wakes him, and so he remembers. 

“Waaseyaa,” Yvon says quietly. “My name is Waaseyaa.”

Hamish does not hear him. 

**Author's Note:**

> The name Waaseyaa means, the first light of dawn. 
> 
> Thank you for reading <3


End file.
